Welcome to the IAF Northwest!

The IAF Northwest is a regional network of broad-based community alliances in Washington, Oregon, Canada and Australia. Each alliance’s goals are to build individual civic leadership, strengthen its member organizations, and to serve as a vehicle for these members to act in the public arena with sufficient power for the common good.

The IAF Northwest is part of the larger Industrial Areas Foundation which has affiliates in 19 additional states, the United Kingdom and Germany. Started in 1940, the IAF is the oldest and most widely recognized network of its kind. The IAF Northwest consists of eight established local Alliances and four start-up Alliances.

Each of the Alliances is a broad-based organization made up of a diverse group of resourceful, passionate everyday people—united through their religious, education, labor and community organizations.

The Alliances create opportunities for these people to connect and act powerfully and creatively as leaders - to bring about practical solutions to the challenges facing their families and communities. The IAF Northwest is nonideological and strictly nonpartisan, but proudly, publicly, and persistently political.

CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

Clinic Based Organizing

The Clinic Based Organizing Initiative builds on the historical roots of community health centers, in which the clinic collective - providers and patients together - worked to address fundamental injustices in the community by exercising "power with". The initiative’s goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of organizing efforts today in addressing the "social determinants of health" by surfacing and equipping patient leaders in communities highly impacted by health, income, and race-based disparities to act together on their own behalves to address issues at the root of those injustices.

Physical Education (PE) Campaign

The American Heart Association recommends children receive 150 minutes per week of physical education in elementary school - benefiting health, academics, and student behavior. Some Washington schools, especially in communities highly impacted by health, income, and race-based disparities, have been failing to provide even the low current state standard of 100 minutes of PE per week. This campaign is focusing on getting schools in the state's largest district - Seattle - to meet the state PE standard across the board, starting with those schools most impacted by health disparities.

NEWS:

February, 2015 -- On February 3, over 50 people from 16 institutions gathered to review the results of a capacity building campaign that had, over the past month, gathered stories from over 350 people from a diverse range of institutions including 6 Seattle schools, unions, churches, the Health Equity Circle, and Casa Latina. Guided by table discussions, the group discerned three areas to focus further research and action:

February, 2015 -- At the last Metro Organizing Team meeting, MACG member institutions decided to embark on a listening “campaign”.
The goal is for MACG leaders to listen to each other within their institutions, to generate stories and take note of issues that we share commonly in our community.

February, 2015 -- In the first win for Sound Alliance homelessness work, 275 leaders and allies made a proposal to Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell to work together to develop a day shelter-hygiene center benefiting homeless people at an assembly on November 11, 2014 at member institution St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. The Mayor agreed to work with the Sound Alliance and to find more partners to make the project a reality.

January, 2015 -- MACG has a new Latino Organizer! Paul Riek is bilingual/bicultural community organizer with many years' experience working with marginalized Latino communities. He is a member of MACG member St. Andrew Catholic Church.

January, 2015 -- Sound Alliance leaders are carrying out a series “house meetings” to surface new leaders, form stronger relationships, and better understand the pressures that are affecting our community. The campaigns will culminate in a Discernment Assembly on February 3 where Sound Alliance leaders will prioritize the issue areas that will engage the most new leaders and have the biggest positive impact on the community.